ALBAWABA - Time travel may be possible using spinning lasers, according to American theoretical physicist Ronald Lawrence Mallett, who has even developed a prototype to test the idea.
Interesting Engineering said in a report that Mallett, an academic, author and a physics professor who has been a faculty member at the University of Connecticut since 1975, "is on a mission to develop a real-life working time machine that uses lasers."
Ronald Mallett is on a mission to develop a real-life working time machine that uses lasers. Fascinated by the concept since childhood, he is now 77 years old.
— Interesting Engineering (@IntEngineering) March 4, 2023
Find out more at https://t.co/NKAOnszf9t ?#engineering #interestingengineering pic.twitter.com/bf6Eko8lfT
"Fascinated by the concept since childhood, he is now 77 years old," the report said, pointing to Mallett, who is widely known as the "father of time machine."
"But it will be hard because, according to what we know about physics now, time travel is impossible, even though it is often shown in science fiction," the report by Interesting Engineering asserted.
"After losing his beloved father when he was 10, Ronald Mallett read HG Wells & Einstein. They inspired his eminent career as a theoretical physicist – & his lifelong ambition to build a time machine. Prof Ronald Mallett thinks he has cracked time travel" https://t.co/tdb7yUwCln
— J. #EmergencyConfetti Doyle also on POST (@sibersong) March 2, 2023
"As we understand them, the laws of physics do not allow for backward time travel in a way that would be consistent with causality, meaning that events cannot happen before their causes," Interesting Engineering said.
But it added that some theories, "like the theory of general relativity and the idea of wormholes, make it possible to travel through time." It explained that the models are "based on a lot of guesswork and require conditions we can't reach with our current technology."
"So, even though time travel is still a common theme in science fiction, it is not thought to be possible based on what we know about science right now," it added.
Ronald Mallett thinks he has cracked time travel. The secret, he says, is in twisting the fabric of space-time with a ring of rotating lasers to make a loop of time that would allow you to travel backwards.https://t.co/dYVqfXzNhv pic.twitter.com/jbn3IyL4XH
— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) March 1, 2023
But Mallett may have found a loophole. "His idea is to create an artificial black hole, which could generate a gravitational field that could lead to time loops and the ability to travel to the past," according to a recent article in The Guardian.
After losing his beloved father when he was 10, Ronald Mallett read HG Wells and Einstein. They inspired his eminent career as a theoretical physicist, and his lifelong ambition to build a time machine, writes Daniel Lavelle for @guardian. https://t.co/5z2r0uRPaH
— Cambridge Skeptics (@cambskeptics) March 3, 2023
Since 2019, the prototype has produced a continuously rotating light beam.
The Guardian stressed that Mallett's belief "is not as ridiculous as it might seem" afterall.
"Entire academic departments, such as the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney, are dedicated to studying the possibility of time travel. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is working on a “time-reversal machine” to detect dark matter," it said.
"Of course there are still lots of physicists who believe time travel, or at least travelling to the past, is impossible, but it is not quite the sci-fi pipe dream it once was," it added.
